great
families, with their proportionately increased wealth gained through
trade, built beautiful palaces and built them well. The gorgeous
colouring of the frescoed walls shows Byzantine influence. In _The Art
of Interior Decoration_ we have described at length the house furnishing
of that time. Against this background moved woman, man's mate; note her
colour scheme and then her role. (We quote from Jahn Rusconi in _Les
Arts_, Paris, August, 1911.)

"Donna Francesca dei Albizzi's cloak of black cloth ornamented on a
yellow background with birds, parrots, butterflies, pink and red roses,
and a few other red and green figures; dragons, letters and trees in
yellow and black, and again other figures made of white cloth with red
and black stripes."

Extravagance ran high not only in dress, but in everything, laws were
made to regulate the amount spent on all forms of entertainment, even on
funerals, and the cook who was to prepare a wedding feast had to submit
his menu for approval to the city authorities. More than this, only two
hundred guests could be asked to a wedding, and the number of presents
which the bride was allowed to receive was limited by law. But wealth
and fashion ran away with laws; the same old story.

As the tide of the Renaissance rose and swept over Europe (the awakening
began in Italy), the woman of the gorgeous cloak and her
contemporaries, according to the vivid description of the last quoted
author, were "subject to their husbands' tyranny, not even knowing how
to read in many cases, occupied with their household duties, in which
they were assisted by rough and uncouth slaves, with no other mission in
life than to give birth to a numerous posterity.... This life ruined
them, and their beauty quickly faded away; no wonder, then, that they
summoned art to the aid of nature. The custom was so common and the art
so perfect that even a painter like Taddeo Gaddi acknowledged that the
Florentine women were the best painters in the world!... Considering the
mental status of the women, it is easy to imagine to what excesses they
were given in the matter of dress." The above assertions relate to the
average woman, not the great exceptions.

The marriage coffers of woman of the Renaissance in themselves give an
idea of her luxurious tastes. They were about six feet long, three feet
high, and two and a half feet deep. Some had domed covers opening on
hinges--the whole was carved, gilded and painted, the ba